Eur. Phys. J. B (2017) 90: 80
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80051-6

Regular Article

Coevolution of functional flow processing networks

¹ National Scientific and Technical Research Council & Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, National University of Cuyo, Padre Contreras 1300, 5500 Mendoza, Argentina
² Abteilung Physikalische Chemie, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany

^a e-mail: pkaluza@mendoza-conicet.gob.ar

Received: 20 January 2017
Received in final form: 13 March 2017
Published online: 2 May 2017

Abstract

We present a study about the construction of functional flow processing networks that produce prescribed output patterns (target functions). The constructions are performed with a process of mutations and selections by an annealing-like algorithm. We consider the coevolution of the prescribed target functions during the optimization processes. We propose three different paths for these coevolutions in order to evolve from a simple initial function to a more complex final one. We compute several network properties during the optimizations by using the different path-coevolutions as mean values over network ensembles. As a function of the number of iterations of the optimization we find a similar behavior like a phase transition in the network structures. This result can be seen clearly in the mean motif distributions of the constructed networks. Coevolution allows to identify that feed-forward loops are responsible for the development of the temporal response of these systems. Finally, we observe that with a large number of iterations the optimized networks present similar properties despite the path-coevolution we employed.